Kierkegaard says that the apostle lives for an eternal paradox, whereas the genius lives for a temporal one (an idea that is new, exciting and scandalous in the present, but will become platitudinous in the future). The apostle's paradox can never become platitudinous. It is beyond the Kantian frame inherently (that is, beyond sensibility and intellect), and it must therefore be a-historical.

Kierkegaard was not able to conceive that the Kantian frame might be some day overcome or transformed from within, but today we can see that we have the power to recast (soon) our own bio-cognitive array of intelligibility - or at the very least that this array is not absolute.

Thus, a precise definition of "Ark": the Ark is a paradox that is both eternal and temporal. As opposed to mere "art" which can only be a temporal paradox, and equally opposed to "arcana", which always refer back to preconstituted perennial wisdom, we have "Ark" or "Arkana", a paradox so paradoxical that is cancels even the caesura between time and eternity.

As such, the Beams of the Ark bring together aesthetic transgression, emancipatory politics and messianic eschatology